I'm obviously late to the party, but had to add my two cents (I'd actually be willing to go up to a nickel): Wow. This is one of the more amazing sequences of wildlife images or footage that I've seen in a while. This prompted me to visit your other "thread wins," and wow again. All the better that no birds seemed to have been harmed in any session.

It must be these birds that are the problem and not the destruction of habitat and the long line factory fishing boats. The ag corporations in California have been very successful in getting dams built and diverting up to 90% of the water to their fields from major rivers and the result has been the reduction of wild fish stocks to the point where most of the fishing in the state is for fish raised in government operated fish farms.

Along the Pacific coast the long line fishermen starting in the 1970's attacked on rock species after another and these are fish that take 12 to 22 years to reach sexual maturity and start producing offspring. The fishermen wiped out the rock fish populations in Monterey and Carmel bays.

Pollution from the oil refineries wiped out the oyster and ghost shrimp populations in the SF Bay and none of the bottom fish are safe to eat with their levels of heavy metals in the flesh.

But we see a cormorant snatch a fish or a sea lion grab a salmon and somehow they are to blame when fish populations drop by 99% over the past century. Populations that were stable for millenia before factory fishing boats came into existence. In Moss Landing there is a single sardine fishing boat that has a hold for up to 750,000 lbs. of fish and will take in up to 120,000 lbs. of fish in a single netting. The sardines are shipped overseas and most of it ends up in tins of cat food.

There has been a decline in tons of fish pulled from the world's oceans every year since 1989. Anyone seen an explosion in sea birds or sea lions in the past 24 years? I have to think that a large number of people get their propaganda from Fox which is very sad indeed.